Angela Nurini Agni, center, and Tri Widayanti, right, sit in on a post-clinical checkup Wednesday. The two are visiting physicians from Indonesia.

Written by

Tara Bannow
| Iowa City Press-Citizen

Two eye doctors visiting Iowa City from Indonesia stood in the operating room Wednesday, quietly watching University of Iowa specialists perform an experimental gene therapy procedure on an 11-year-old patient.

The goal of the procedure, part of a national gene therapy study, was to cure a blinding eye disease. It will be at least six weeks before the patient and doctors learn whether it was successful.

Angela Nurini Agni, director of the retina service at the University of Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and Tri Wahyu Widayanti, an assistant professor at UGM, spent two weeks in Iowa ...